I have scars too because I trip a lot, walk into tables, slip, and bump into everything. I’m like a badly controlled Sims character. I survived the dinosaur apocalypse by sheer luck because I was taking a nap in the right place at the right time.
A/N 1: HAPPY BIRTHDAY MY TIGER BOY! I LOVE YOU SO MUCH! PLEASE ALWAYS BE HAPPY AND SMILE! ATSUSHI DESERVES ALL THE HAPPINESS IN THIS WORLD BECAUSE HE’S A PURE FLUFF. Now say it louder for those at the back who cannot comprehend this! I couldn’t resist sneaking in atsukyou and atsulucy heh (guilty not guilty)
So before I begin this is a meta I’m writing about a ship, because I like that ship. If you do not like that ship you can just not read this post.
Anyway, a post on the relationship between Atsushi Nakajima and Lucy Maud Montgomery and why I think Lucy’s feelings for Atsushi are explicitly coded as romantic, and why they play off of each other really well.
1. Lucy and Kyouka, a comparison
Okay, so I’m not pitting two female against each other in order to talk about a ship. This section is specifically about the foiling so far shown in story between Kyouka and Lucy. Despite having similar backstories, both of them being orphans, both of them being exploited at first by a criminal organization the guild for Lucy and the Port Mafia for Kyouka, they’re quite interestingly opposites in almost every other way. Especially in regards to their relationship with Atsushi and their first encounters with him.
Kyoka is presented to us as a remorseful killer, seeking death as atonement for her actions. This is later confirmed with Akutagawa’s anaylsis of her in the Akutagawa arc. Akutagawa identified that she had eyes like Dazai, eyes of a person who wanted revenge against life, and was seeking death.
Kyouka is significant to Atsushi because she is the first person he deliberately makes the choice to save. By this I mean, the first seven or so chapters before this arc Akutagawa sort of stumbles around unfamiliar with the environment he’s being brought into with the detective agency, following around other detective agency members. He fights Akutagawa in the alleyway, but even that, he loses control of his power and the tiger does most of his fighting for him. Kyouka marks a turning point because it’s the first real time Atsushi takes an active role in things, and uses the Tiger’s power to save Kyouka. Not just in removing the bomb from her chest, but also when she tries to return to Akutagawa Atsushi ignores the advice of the rest of the detective agency and decides to go after her a second time defeating Akutagawa in order to bring her home.
This is a pattern to Atsushi and Kyouka’s relationship, even when Kyouka won’t believe in herself, or value herself, Atsushi will go to no end to save her. It’s because she met Atsushi that Kyouka begins to value her own life again, especially the next time around when Akutagawa notices the look in her eyes have changed and she’s someone no longer seeking death. Atsushi was integral in taking her away from the mafia, and bringing her into a much healthy environment in the detective agency. Which is why Atsushi and Kyouka’s relationship is important for both of them, and Atsushi has definitely fostered more positive growth in Kyouka then Akutagawa ever did.
However, there’s a bit of an unhealthy aspect to this pattern for Atsushi saving Kyouka over and over again. It entirely has to do with the fact that Atsushi defines his entire self-worth by his ability to save people.
Atsushi doesn’t save people for entirely selfless reasons. He does it in order to validate himself and his own existence. It’s not, an inference on my part, it’s direct text, he literally says it word for word in the above panel. Of course, Atsushi thinking this way is sympathetic, because he literally had this philosophy beaten into him. However, it is still an unhealthy mindset he continues to cling to instead of growing past. Atsushi didn’t save Kyouka out of the goodness of his heart, or because he thinks she deserved another chance of redemption. I mean, I’m sure he thought she did later on after getting to know her.
Atsushi’s entire thought process was that if I save Kyouka, then it proves then I am a good person. It’s a good thing that Kyouka got saved, and a good thing that Atsushi finally decided to take action to save her, but that element of self interest in Atsushi’s decision to save others messes with both his relationships and his perceptions of people.
The most obvious case is Akutagawa. Atsushi has decided in his own head, that Kyouka is someone worthy of redemption and Akutagawa is not. Atsushi playing good victim and bad victim is more of this selfish desire to prove that he’s a good person by saving others, b/c otherwise the headmaster is right because he’s a worthless person.
Akutagawa doesn’t deserve to be saved because he murders people, well so does Kyouka. So did Dazai.
Akutagawa doesn’t deserve to be saved because he’s a powerful member of the port mafia and he doesn’t want to leave his position. So did Kyouja. So did Dazai.
Atsushi’s hypocritical views on saving others is something that should be challenged to make him grow as a person, because as I said it’s unhealthy and unsustainable. One of my favorite lines Kunikida uses to describe Atsushi is “You are not strong, you are.” Atsushi depends on both the tiger’s overwhelming power and regenerative ability to compensate for the fact he regularly throws himself into danger to save others. His playing hero would have killed him by this point, if not for the tiger. Akutagawa also rightfully pointed out in the fight between them in the guild arc, no one’s going to stamp Atsushi’s birth certificate with the seal of approval. No one’s actually going to say “it’s okay for you to live.”
Atsushi’s tendencies are extremely unhealthy and unsustainable, and the only raeson he hasn’t become his worst self is because he’s in a much healthier environment than Akutagawa, surrounded by good people who support him.
Atsushi’s decision to play good victim and bad victim between Akutagawa and Kyouka is even more unhealthy. Atsushi needs to prove deep down inside that Akutagawa is a bad person, and he is a good one.. Atsushi projects even harder on both of them in the Beast AU, to the point where he suffers a psychological breakdown several times over that leads him to the conclusion he must kill Akutagawa to prove he is a good person while at the same time not allowing any harm to come over Kyouka ever. As Akutagawa points out, it’s not really his desire to save and protect Kyouka that motivates him so far. He’s not doing this because he’s afraid of losing her. It’s guilt. Atsushi is guilty for what happened at the orphanage, and he’s desperately trying to prove despite doing x bad thing, he is still a good person because hey look, he protects Kyouka.
Atsushi viewing Kyouka as someone he needs to protect/save is understandable considering the circumstances, but it’s also something that adds an unhealthy codependency to their relationship. Akutagawa even points this out ironically, that they’re acting like “Kind-hearted murderers”. They are in effect enabling each other (In the Beast AU) because they’re both afraid of losing each other. Kyouka even had a chance to leave the mafia, but she deliberately went back for Atsushi because she couldn’t exist without him and/or felt she owed him for saving her. That’s quite literally what an abusive codependency is.
Of course this is Atsushi and Kyouka’s relationship at their absolute worst, but I’ll argue even in canon that kind of power dynamic exists between them. Atsushi is her savior first and foremost. It is of course something that could be overcome with character development and a chance in the way these two view each other, but I don’t think Kyouka will ever confront the aspect of Atsushi that saves others for selfish reasons, because that is what saved her.
I bring this up because this divide between Atsushi as the savior, and Kyouka as the one who was saved by him is entirely absent in Atsushi’s relationship with Lucy. In fact, their relationship starts out the complete opposite way then his did with Kyouka.
Lucy is introduced as a much more straightforward antagonist. She’s not begging for death like Kyouka is, or showing remorse for the people she’s killed so far. Lucy is lashing out, and not only that believes she’s justified in lashing out. She’s also not trying to die, she’s deliberately fighting against Atsushi, because as she tells him this is literally the only way the guild will allow her to keep living, if she’s useful to them and brings Atsushi and the rest in.
Atsushi’s fight with Lucy ends with Atsushi sympathizing with Lucy the same way he did Kyouka, however he does not save her. Every time after this the pattern repeats, Atsushi does express sympathy continually, but doesn’t know how to save her, only defeat her. Which means Lucy already from the start challenges Atsushi on one of his flaws. She’s not such a straightforward case as a damsel waiting to be saved, (not to imply Kyouka is, but like Kyouka was actively suicidal and saving her was a case of Atsushi blowing up a bomb and then defeating Akutagawa). Atsushi’s usual method of saving her, by playing hero, or taking down a bad guy will not save her.
It’s not Atsushi’s strength, that eventually reaches through to Lucy. It’s exposure of his own vulnerability. It’s only when he steps out of the role of superhero and savior and shows her his scars. That he is just another person raised in an incredibly neglectful orphanage, that he is able to reach Lucy properly.
The thing about Atsushi and Lucy both is that they are victims who do not want to view themselves as victims. Atsushi doesn’t just adopt the narrative that the orphanage headmaster gave him because it was forced upon him, but also because it allows him to believe that he is a strong hero capable of saving others, rather than just another person suffering and in need of saving himself. It enables him to have agency and power. IN the Beast AU which is once again Atsushi’s worst self, Atsushi has absolutely no agency whatsoever, he just does whatever Dazai says believeing everything that Dazai says is fixed. He’s an Atsushi who will never grow past his victimhood in the orphanage into his own person, because he doesn’t want to grow, he wants to redo the past and make it so he didn’t kill the headmaster.
Lucy already understands Atsushi on a level that other people don’t in the manga by viewing his victimhood (arguably Akutagawa sees him this way too), but she also requires more out of him then just Atsushi playing the role of savior.
This is also something Atsushi wants to do. He doesn’t want the headmaster’s words haunting him forever. He doesn’t want to keep hallucinating the headmaster commanding him to do things. Atsushi’s ultimate goal is to grow into his own person, who can believe in himself, not become a hero who saves others over and over and over and over and over and over. Lucy is someone who pushes Atsushi towards that goal. Because, she sees him as more than just a hero.
One reason I love Kunikida’s earlier quote about the tiger being strong and Atsushi not being strong, and Lucy’s actions here in pointing out that Atsushi could just die from his reckless actions, is that they’re both caring for Atsushi’s well-being in their own way. They are challenging Atsushi’s narrative that he’s the hero by challenging him to telling him to think of his own well being, you know like a person would. They care about Atsushi as a person, their care isn’t something he has to earn by saving them.
It’s an important reversal on the way Atsushi usually views his relationships with people, that actually, Lucy is the one who saves him. Atsushi tries twice to save her in his usual way, but he never actually saved her like a damsel in the movie. Lucy got off the Moby Dick herself when Atsushi failed to find her, and Lucy found a job at the cafe underneath the detective agency by herself. This is something that makes Lucy angry at Atsushi in the short term, but benefits their relationship in the long term, because they start out on more equal footing.
If you compare Kyouka and Lucy’s individual relationships to Atsushi in this chapter, Kyouka doesn’t really require anything from Atsushi. For her just being near Atsushi is enough. It’s sweet, but like I said, it’s not exactly equal, and there is a bit of a subtext of codependency there. Lucy actually gets mad at Atsushi, she gets mad when he hurts himself or has no regard for his own life, she’s mad when she thinks Atsushi has forgotten about her. Lucy requires Atsushi to talk things out with her. It’s an actual personal conflict that requires him to be more of a person, rather than simply playing the role of protector to someone else. Lucy also, usually cools down right away when Atsushi explains his feelings towards her more properly, so she’s not even that unreasonable with her anger towards him.
All of this to say, Lucy doesn’t really feel indebted to Atsushi. Especially since every time he claimed he was going to save her, he failed. Lucy is there because she wants to be. She deliberately sought him out because she wanted to have a relaitonship with him, and talk to him more after their conversation on the Moby Dick. Lucy is someone who sees his personal failings a lot more thanother characters (except maybe Akutagawa), she notices that Atsushi is oblivious in regards to a lot of things and should think things through more, that he’s really tactless in his relationships with other people, and also he gets himself hurt a lot. These are things Lucy also rightfully calls him and challenges him on, especially the part where he hurts himself because she does not want him to get hurt even saving others.
This also isn’t old stuff from before the Guild Arc. Abord the skyship, when Atsushi went to great lengths to get to Sigma and try to recover the page from him, and afterwards when he didn’t want Sigma to fall to his death, it was Lucy who noticed he was about to fall and jumped off the sky casino the same way Atsushi jumped to save Sigma, but specifically to save him. A scene followed right away by Atsushi immediately leaping to save her, when Nathaniel Hawthorne attacks her. Lucy is also about as major a character and as important as Kyouka to this point, she was involved in the cannibalism arc, and in the climax of the Sky Casino arc. Her, Atsushi and Kyouka are essentially a trio by this point, Ango even went out of his way to point out that Lucy is just as loyalto Atsushi and Kyouka is. Except Lucy’s feelings are the one more explicitly coded as romantic.
Lucy didn’t just help him in the guild arc, and also in the cannibalism arc when they needed her ability to keep Fukuichi safe. She literally went out of her way to chase him down when the entire detective agency became fugitives, even rushing to the police to prove her innocence. When confronted on why she did it, and why she sought out Ango to come and rescue Atsushi when he needed it, her blushing flustered reaction is coded as pretty romantic.
Once again, this isn’t to make Kyouka’s relationship to Atsushi less important than Lucy’s. The same way I see Lucy and Atsushi coded as romantic, I think there’s more coding for Atsushi and Kyouka as a brother and sister figure.
Then a lot of things that would be unhealthy for them as a romantic relationship resolve themselves. The way Kyouka depends on Atsushi, and Atsushi views her as a protector, that makes more sense if Atsushi over time becomes more of a surrogate brother figure to her. The way they always have to be together in Kyouka’s mind and she goes whereever he goes, makes more sense if you view Atsushi as the substitute for the family he lost. I’m not saying that it’s incest if you ship them as something else, just that the writing suggests a more platonic relationship between them lately, whereas Lucy is set up as someone more explicitly romantic.
This also results in an interesting bit of foiling with Akutagawa. The two most important women in Akutagawa’s life are his literal little sister Gin who he grew up in the orphanage, and his subordinate Higuchi who specifically serves Akutagawa not because he protected her. (In fact a major part of their arc is how Akutagawa was abusive to her at first, but improved upon his behavior towards her when she helped him at a time he was weak in spite of his past behavior to her) but out of personal loyalty. Now it’s a running gag that Higuchi’s feelings for Akutagawa are mostly unnoticed and one sided, but they are confirmed romantic feelings she was even about to confess before the mafia was vamped. Besides Dazai and Atsushi, Lucy and Gin are the two most important relationships to Akutagawa’s character, and Higuchi’s connection to him is romantic at least on her end.
Atsushi also has his two most important relationships be two girls, Kyouka and Lucy. Lucy is more explicitly tsundere over him, the same way Higuchi’s crush was quite obvious even before she explicitly textually confirmed it.
In Beast where the main conflict is Akutagawa saving his sister Gin, the reason Akutagawa and Atsushi are fighting in the first place is they are both trying to protect their sisters. Atsushi remains in the port mafia to remain together with Kyouka and because Dazai gives him orders. Dazai’s orders put him directly in the way of Akutagawa saving Gin’s life. The parallel their is pretty clear, Gin is to Akutagawa what Kyouka is to Atsushi a little sister he needs to protect. Also, in a moment of foiling between Kyouka and Gin, they also both view their actions as protecting the other one in turn. Kyouka returns to the mafia so he won’t be alone when she had the chance to escape. Gin runs away from Ryunosuke because she believes that he’s going to kill himself if he completes his quest for saving her, because he will no longer have a reason to live. Atsushi and Akutagawa seek to protect them, and are protected by them in return, you know like family. The central motto of Beast also applies to Atsushi’s relationship with Kyouka and his relentless drive to save her, a hero is someone who saves his little sister and brings her back home safe no matter what.
Lucy is also, absent entirely in a novel whose main focus is Kyouka and Atsushi’s relationship where they are paralleled to the relationship between Akutagawa and his sister. Higuchi is absent as well, and only shows up at the very end when Akutagawa resolves to live on and grow up. Which I think suggests a more adult relationship for both of the boys, Akutagawa and Higuchi + Lucy and Atsushi is something with the the potential to grow into lovers in the future. It’s a pairing that challenges each boy to grow up together with them.
